


The Pelican

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Damn you Eurus you awful person, Despair, Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Eye Trauma, Gen, I'm warning you it is PAINFUL, Mental Breakdown, Mycroft loses it completely, Self-Harm, Sherlock Series 4 Spoilers, Some Canon Divergence in Dialogue, Tragedy, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 12:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10217888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: That's what nobody tells you, about having a heart of stone. That when it breaks, when it shatters, when it crumbles, you have no pieces left. Only dust.





	

Timing is key.

To a joke; to a dance; to a death. One beat out of place and the effort falls flat. He knows that. Mycroft has witnessed all three.

Of course, when it comes to your death, you only experience it once. (Unless you're Sherlock.) You only have one shot (and sometimes it takes just one shot, as now) to get it right. He will get it right, if it is the last thing he will do- and it is. He will put an end to all of this, as a good mathematician should- with an equals sign; and the answer. The equation is unbalanced by his mistakes, but his death can at least do something to solve it, link the problem to the proof. He made the previous sums that led to this problem, so he must step into the balance.

Mycroft locks himself away; and it is easier than he thought, to bring out the Ice Man, who must perform him this one last service: to goad Sherlock into the calculation. _I would rather die as myself, but I've long since exhausted the few chances I have had to act with only my desires in mind._

But his calculation, it would seem, required dividing by zero. Sherlock read him better than a book and found the story unconvincing. Less convincing than even Lady Bracknell.

Mycroft should not ask this, but perhaps he could beg a few crumbs yet though he knows starvation will still come.

"What gave me away?" He asks. A good actor listens to feedback.

"You said you always despised me," Sherlock softly gives him the answer he has wanted for so long. "I remember enough to know that was never true. You never despised me. I never despised you."

_But I did not love Sherlock_ he realises. _If I truly loved Sherlock, if he mattered as much as I told myself that he did, then I should have smothered Eurus to death in her sleep the day she first threatened him. I should have seen only the threat to my little brother and acted without hesitation to remove that threat forever. She was a child, yes, but so was Sherlock and he was_ mine _and he was_ broken. I _put conscience over courage and Victor Trevor died for it. I will not make that mistake again._

Now he can die as himself, if at the cost of Sherlock's suffering. It may as well be somewhat worth it. Mycroft tidies himself. What other matters are there to arrange...ah! The Royal Society. A promise was made, it would not do to forget; and he has always been squeamish when it comes to trauma to the head.

_If there is a hell, though there very probably is not, I shall sit there and wait patiently for my sweet sister to join me. Then I will repay and repay and repay._ _A stupid dream, but a comforting one. I'm about to die, why should I not indulge in a little stupidity? Everyone else does while they're living._

He recalls Uncle Rudy's last words. They'll serve just as well here.

"No flowers, by request."

Would Sherlock spread this request? The Diogenes Club could well ignore him and send a wreath anyway. For all the taciturnity of its members, Diogenes was a silent community that watched out for its own. Who else might mourn him? Mummy could maybe coax a tear or two, with practice. If Father could cry at sentimental John Lewis Christmas adverts, he could be counted on to turn the waterworks. Andrea would take it on the chin, though with a toast to his memory. Lady Smallwood was used to men dying on her by now. If Harry sincerely grieved his loss, he would keep it proper and private, as a true gentleman should.

Arthur, the Oxford widower whose wedding ring Mycroft wore, had gone before him. That was to be expected, him being older than Father. Better this way, that he did not know how Mycroft ended up. _Who does that leave but my Welsh midget?_ Rhoswen might even be able to push herself to leave her house for his funeral, though it had been years since he went out to Cardiff to visit her.

Mycroft thinks about maybe closing his eyes, to smooth the transition to eternal darkness. _No. I will look at you, brother mine. I want your face to be the last thing I see in the world._

But the gun is pointing the wrong way and Mycroft realises instantly what Sherlock intends to do. _No. Please. Please, no._ He can't, he mustn't, how could he do this? After what Mycroft has just shown, how could his own brother do this to him? Mycroft's mind is screaming louder than his voice could possibly express, so loud his heart wraps its strings around his throat and chokes off any sound that his vocal cords might add to the cacophony. He should do something, take the gun off Sherlock, but even if he could only Sherlock has been permitted to shoot. He is checked at every turn and all he can do is _watch._

Mycroft can't hear anything other than his own internal meltdown, so John and Sherlock drop completely without warning.

"Sherlock!" He smacks at his brother's face. Breathing, he's breathing, breathing, breathing. Mycroft flips up Sherlock's eyelids. Out cold, but unharmed. _He will stay unharmed, or I will sink this island into the sea and everyone on it._

When the door is opened, Mycroft is more than ready for them. There's only one bullet in the gun for the purpose, but Mycroft sends it through the head of the first lackey through the door without hesitation. The panic it causes is Mycroft's window of opportunity to take another weapon, but Eurus has sent reserves, so all Mycroft can do to retreat back inside and throw the empty gun squarely at the head of the next person through the door. (Though that is somewhat satisfying.)

Mycroft can't defend both of them, so he lets John be carted out of the room while he bodily throws himself across Sherlock to shield him from the people who are trying to take his brother away. Desperately holding on, limpet-like, to Sherlock reminds him of when his brother realised he couldn't find Redbeard. How small he had been then, a speck in the shadow of his own emotions that loomed like giants, drenched in pain as much as in mud.

"I can't find Redbeard," Sherlock had sobbed into Mycroft's arms. "I can't, I ca- it hurts, Mycroft, _it hurts so much. Make it stop. Make it stop hurting._ "

_I failed._

Their hands are on him now, but Mycroft's grip only tightens. "No!"

Their hands wrench at his arms and Mycroft can only bear it, he must not let go, not even if they break his bones will he let them take Sherlock away. It feels as if half of Sherrinford is piled on top of him, crushing him, but he must hold on, if he holds on just long enough Sherlock could come to and have a chance, one chance, to defend himself and break out.

"Get away from him!" He's shrieking so loud he's sure Eurus can hear without amplification. "GET OUT! Get away from him! Don't! Don't touch him! Get off of me! Get your hands off of me NOW!"

When half of Sherrinford pulls as one and heaves him off, snaps his hold, Mycroft has nothing left to hold him back. No ice is left, but there is enough water to drown. He cannot fight them all at once, but he has, if not strength, viciousness enough to repel, with his knees, his feet, his elbows, his fists, his hands. When the man in front of him proves impervious to blows, Mycroft's nails find his face. The assailant does not block him in time and Mycroft can feel something squashy give way under his fingers and blood runs over his knuckles with a scream. The others seize the moment and finally pull him away, ripping clean open his jacket in the process and wrestle him, still kicking and screaming, out of sight of his brother- which only makes him resist caging more fiercely. The curses and sobs of "my EYE!" follow them as he is dragged back to where the governor of Sherrinford is cooling on the floor. Mycroft regrets that the cell no longer contains Eurus' violin, else he would have taken savage delight in using it as a weapon. The bow could have taken the second eye out much more neatly.

But once he is locked inside, there is nobody to lash out at but himself. He has been imprisoned before, but never so hopelessly as now, with as small a chance of freedom as now, with as great a need to be free and strong as now. He wipes the blood off of his fingers with the mattress cover and ignores the congealing scramble spattered across the glass. The room seems much colder in just his shirtsleeves.

Mycroft allows himself a cough but then it dawns on him that that wasn't a cough but a sob; and now that he has started he cannot even try to stop. Tears that taste old and stale slide down his face, tears he has bottled for years, mixing with young ones that have nowhere to be contained. His face seems to melt and twist under their warmth, like clay turning soft under rain. Yet he does not even know how to cry properly. He jumps between brokenly panting and heaving to smothered little whimpers. His heart, which has been galloping along, seems now to be throwing itself against his ribcage, as if trying to escape his chest and flee the pain trapped inside it, surrounding it, crushing it. But his heart is chained into his body and has only just discovered the trap. Because that's what nobody tells you about having a heart of stone. When it shatters, breaks, crumbles, there are no pieces left. Only dust.

It was believed, mistakenly, that mother pelicans in time of famine will draw blood from themselves to feed their young with it. The ultimate act of self-sacrifice for love. There's a famous portrait of Gloriana, a pelican brooch at her heart. Mycroft can recall every stroke of it. He has no young; and the siblings who are all he has to call his own are either dead or should be. _Sherlock failed the game, so she will torture him to death. He may be dead even now, Dr Watson too._ All he could do now was wait for her to finish him off.

Mycroft has no young, but he draws blood nonetheless. His flesh feels too tight for the bursting, the pressure of every single different thought and feeling hammering at his defences. After years of drought, this wave of emotion is a flood flattening everything in its path. He watches it trace a path down his arms, filling the grooves his nails have furrowed. At least it is a rational feeling, that he can explain the cause of. It warms and coats the goosebumps from the cold. He focuses on its colour, sharp against his skin, repeats in his head its contents. Red blood cells, white blood cells, antibodies, platelets, plasma...

Eventually his fingers are too stiff and his head too heavy. He has emptied himself of the worst of the pain and his arms are drying, healing instinctively, without need for conscious command. He is too tired to feel, to fight. Gingerly, feeling the bruises and scrapes and aches across his body from his struggle, he cloaks himself in the bedcovers. They've been changed. There's no smell of her on them. They stick to his open scratches, peeling away painfully when he moves from under them to pick up the pillow and wrap his cloak and arms around it.

Mycroft huddles on the floor against the far wall, shielded by the bedstead. He closes his eyes, his ears, his nose to the cell around him.

If he lulls his senses enough, he could almost believe that the soft weight in his arms is a living, sleeping, newborn baby brother.


End file.
